Dell Color Cloud Multifunction Printer H625cdw Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
This ably outfitted midrange color-laser MFP did well enough on our speed tests, and print quality was above average, but the cost per page dislodged it as a possible Editors’ Choice recipient. Read More…

Dell Color Cloud Multifunction Printer H625cdw Review

Table of Contents

Introduction, Design & Features

On the printer front, Dell has been in serious update mode lately. Over the past several months, we’ve looked at several of the computer giant’s laser-class printers, such as the E525w Color Multifunction Printer and the E515dw Multifunction Printer (entry-level multifunction printers, or MFPs, both). While these, and today’s review unit, the $349.99-direct Dell Color Cloud Multifunction Printer H625cdw, don’t look like particularly modern MFPs on the outside, Dell has made some changes inside that should make them attractive to many moderate-volume, small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs).

The H625cdw is one of two “Color Cloud” printers that Dell released in a group around the same time. The other is the beefier, somewhat pricier Color Cloud Multifunction Printer H825cdw. (That model was $449.99 after an $80 "instant savings" on Dell.com when we wrote this.) The differences between them, however, aren’t all that significant. For the additional $100, you get a 50,000-page monthly duty cycle, versus a 38,000-page duty cycle on the H625cdw, as well as a slightly faster print speed, even though the two machines are otherwise rated identically.

For the most part, we found the H625cdw a strong-performing MFP with better-than-average print quality and a fairly decent monochrome cost per page (CPP). For some reason, though, as you’ll see in the Setup & Paper Handling section later on, Dell couldn’t get it right on the color CPP. It’s far too high for a purported midrange to high-volume printer.

Otherwise, this MFP is stacked to the top with features, starting with a huge 4.3-inch color touch screen, and continuing with a state-of-the-art single-pass automatic document feeder (ADF) for scanning, copying, or faxing two-sided originals in one swipe. In addition, as you’ll see in the Design & Features section next, it comes with nearly every productivity and convenience feature we can reasonably expect in a modern laser model, including a bunch of mobile-connectivity options, as well as Dell’s business and enterprise software and online services, such as Dell Document Hub, and support for a slew of other cloud entities.

Despite the H625cdw's somewhat last-century outer appearance, our only real disappointment with this MFP was its way-high color CPP, which in turn relegates this otherwise impressive laser-class MFP to occasional use, especially when it comes to printing color pages. What it does print—monochrome or color—looks good, but if you really need color and you’re not locked into a situation that requires laser-class output, there is some cutthroat consumables warfare going on right now in the inkjet-printer arena. (Some Epson printers, for example, can print color pages for less than a cent each in ink under certain conditions.)

That said, if specifically laser-class output is what you need and you don’t require a lot of color output—you just need it when you need it—we can’t think of a good reason not to buy this printer. However, Dell could have snagged an Editors’ Choice on this one with a more competitive color CPP.

Design & Features

At 19.7 inches tall by 16.9 inches side-to-side by 19.8 inches from front to back, and weighing a stout 70 pounds, the H625cdw is no desktop printer. The good news is that it comes ready to support Wi-Fi (for wireless connectivity), Ethernet, or direct-connecting to a single computer via USB. So you can place it wherever is most convenient for its bulk, or for your network cabling.

Among this MFP’s most impressive features is its 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF), which supports auto-duplexing. Auto-duplexing is, of course, the ability to scan two-sided originals without your having to flip them manually to scan the second side. In this case, though, this is a single-pass scanner, meaning that it contains two scanning mechanisms that allow it to scan both sides of a sheet simultaneously. In effect, then, duplex scanning is almost as fast as simplex (single-sided) scanning.

We also liked the 4.3-inch color touch screen anchoring the spacious, easy-to-use control panel. It's a customizable screen, and as is relatively common on enterprise printers, the contents of the display are actually a Web page on which you can create, edit, arrange, and move options (on the colored tiles in the below image) as desired. By default, one of these tiles links to Dell’s Document Hub site, which (among other things) allows you to connect and interface with cloud sites, including Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneDrive, Salesforce (in its many editions), and SharePoint Online 2013.

Dell Document Hub comes in two flavors: The Basic free service supports printing from and scanning to cloud sites, while the Premium service allows you to scan to searchable PDFs, as well as various Microsoft Office document formats. Currently, the Premium version is free, but that will probably change as the service becomes more widely used and further developed.

Additional connectivity features include Wi-Fi Direct for connecting compatible devices to one another and Near-Field Communication (NFC) for touch-to-print capabilities. With NFC, you simply touch your NFC-capable Android smartphone or tablet to a designated hotspot on the printer (as shown on the far right side of the control panel in the image below) to connect.

Beyond that, this MFP comes with support for the two most popular typesetting and imaging languages: HP’s Printer Command Language (PCL) and Adobe’s PostScript. The primary applications for these two languages lie in desktop publishing and graphics design. Among other benefits, the ability to print in either “page description language,” or PDL, allows you to use the printer as a reasonably reliable composite or proofing printer.

If you actually need these drivers, you would know it, and you’d know why. In any case, the advantage of having support for either PDL is that both are capable of extraordinary quality, when employed right, and are therefore adept at churning out impeccable documents that will reflect accurately in a larger conventional print job. In other words, either PDL is skilled at getting the most from good hardware.

Table of Contents

Dell Color Cloud Multifunction Printer H625cdw

Our Verdict:
This ably outfitted midrange color-laser MFP did well enough on our speed tests, and print quality was above average, but the cost per page dislodged it as a possible Editors’ Choice recipient.

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